Hacking Your Performance Reviews ??????

At productboard we are running Leadership Reading Club and the Performance Management was our October topic ?? We were just recently establishing our first performance management system that involves all the competency matrixes, salary review and career ladders - so this topic was a must-have. Especially for all the first-time managers, who were about to run their first Performance Review talk ?? What more, we decided to talk loads about this transparently to avoid worrying about becoming a corporation with wild procedures.

For this, I admire Will Larson and his approach on that.

The most sacred responsibilities of management are selecting your company's role model, identifying who to promote, and deciding who needs to leave. At small companies these decisions tend to be fairly ad-hoc, but as companies grow, these decisions solidify into a formal performance management system. Many managers try to engage with these systems as little as possible, which is a shame. If you want to shape your company's culture, inclusion or performance, this is your most valuable entry point.

???? And that is exactly our case ????

The foundation for our Friday discussion was our favourite HBR Guide.

Before running any performance review, you need to gather the right information which helps you to construct the complete picture and fairly evaluate everyone on your team.

• ?? You need to be tracking the performance constantly, periodically set entries in your calendar, and you need to keep your notes updated. I use locked Notion page for my one on ones and feedback notes ??
• ?? You should set short informal and monthly progress report from your direct reports. Let them write down their concerns, key accomplishments, problems, individual plans to improve in their individual performance. You have to coach them on ongoing bases.
• ?? If you ever forget to gather information as advised above - look in your emails, calendars for events that help you to remember.
• ?? Before your first review session with your direct report, you should ask them to complete the self-reflection that you go through and you get another perspective. Then you consolidate this input with all the materials you gathered as advised above and prepare for your face2face discussion.

?? These questions you can use within your face2face convo.

• What are your most important accomplishment and achievement since the last review?
• What is worse or better for you in this review in this position?
• Have you achieved goals set during the previous review?
• Have you surpassed on some goals? Which one?
• What helps you meet to achieve them or exceed them
• Are you struggling with any of your goals?
• What is hindering you from achieving them? Poor direction, lack of training, communication? Instruction? Time capacity?
• What do you like the most or the least about your job
• What the manager or anyone can do to help you to better help you succeed?
• What do you hope to achieve in the upcoming months?

Consider your role in employee performance. Your behaviour can be affecting your employee performance and failure of overall harsh criticism. Try to think about how do you contribute to the success and failure of your employees? Do you set up the fail up syndrome? It is not necessary to become a micromanager if there is a poor result in one period.

?? Other tips for better hacking your performance reviews

• ?? If you need something to listen to on your commute then use my ?? HBR 20 mins manager Audible Performance Reviews.
• ?????♂? I absolutely admire Stripe and their approach to probably anything. As you could notice from my previous posts. Let's have a look at how Stripe is designing their performance management ??
• Another HBR Source ?? I remember myself in the world of corporation thinking about performance evaluations as the most useless time-wasting ever. Here is why you need to get it right without annoying your employees ?? HBR Lets not kill performance evaluations yet!
• To differentiate our sources - I love this guide from Google, too ??? Google's Performance Management System.

?? Guide

Here I have 60 performance review phrases you can use today We have implemented CultureAmp for running our eNPS but also for rolling out our Performance Reviews. And they actually have their internal academy with many useful tips. This one is pretty useful as it guides you through the phrases you can use during your Review Session!

?? GROW model

Our co-founder Daniel loves the GROW model that helps the managers to structure career conversation with their teams. This one was developed by Graham Alexander, Alan Fine, and Sir John Whitmore as one tool to guide the process and it is used by Google.

?? Goal: What do you want? 

• Establish what the team member really wants to achieve with their career.
• “Where do you see yourself in one, five, and ten years?”
• “If money or your current skills weren’t an issue, what would be your dream role?”
• “What are your interests, values, and motivations?”

?? Reality: What’s happening now? 

• Establish the team member's understanding of their current role and skills.
• “What are the most rewarding or frustrating aspects of your current role?”
• “Do you feel challenged or stretched in your current role? What would make it more challenging? What isn’t challenging you?"
• “What feedback have you received from other people on your strengths and weaknesses?”

?????♀? Options: What could you do? 

• Generate multiple options for closing the gap from goal to reality.
• “What can you do right now to further develop skills that would be useful in reaching that goal we talked about earlier?”
• “What stretch assignments, big projects, or experiences could you pursue?”
• “What networking or mentorship options are there?”

???? Will: What will you do?

•  Identify achievable steps to move from reality to the goal.
• “What will you do? By when?”
• “What resources would be useful? What skills will help you get there?”
• “What advocacy would help? How can I or our team leader provide more support towards your development?”

?? What is our performance set up?

So we use the CultureAmp performance system and this is what are the features!

1. Self-reflection written by the individual.
2. Manager requested feedback - peer review requested by the manager.
3. Manager review - manager provides the feedback that she collected during the quartal.
4. Calibration - leadership comparing folks against a ladder.
5. Face 2 face review session.

What are your thoughts on this? I am extremely obsessed now with so many different approaches and with all the various models from other startups, but also from huge companies! Please do tell me and share your ways!

And if you are looking for more information around performance management, career levels, I recommend following one of the wisest Will I know. Will used to work and implemented these systems in companies such as Uber, Digg or Stripe ?? And I love him platonically. And he is super responsive, so he actually got in touch with me and helped me to understand a bunch of the pain points I had. Find him on Twitter @lethain.

Cheers to performing ????